


The Dead Don't Have Semblances

by sunsleeping



Category: Danny Phantom, RWBY
Genre: Found Family, Multi, Pandora!Pyrrha, Void!Danny, dimensional space core!Danny, hunters & huntresses AU, trans!Danny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22389835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsleeping/pseuds/sunsleeping
Summary: Fenton Ghost Theory: The ‘semblance’ of a human or faunus is a survival necessity called upon when their body feels that they are closest to death for the first time. A ‘ghost’ is born of the human semblance creating a dulled echo of human conscious, which stabilizes in a dimension layered across our own known as the 'Veil.' This is the realm of the 'Gods' and the dead, the unborn souls of the damned and the consciousness fueling the creatures of grimm. The primary concern of ghosts, specifically their relationship with grimm, is that they hate the still-living. It is possible that they are the ones directing the creatures of grimm; more stable beings in this dimension, but ultimately arisen from the Veil in a direct contrast with the undead.Ghosts are dangerous. What is the human-faunus semblance when it is in control, and the being who utilized it in life prior is now its decorum rather than vice versa?
Relationships: Danny Fenton/Tucker Foley/Sam Manson, Danny Fenton/Valerie Gray, Dash Baxter & Kwan & Paulina Sanchez & Star, Dash Baxter/Kwan, Jaune Arc/Lie Ren/Pyrrha Nikos/Nora Valkyrie, Paulina Sanchez/Star, Paulina Sanchez/Star/Sam Manson, Pyrrha Nikos & Penny Polendina, Valerie Gray & Danielle "Dani" Phantom
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	1. 0:1:1 The Fall of Beacon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1:1:1 Meaning:
> 
> Arc: Chapter: Chapter Section  
> Due to college, I will not likely be able to post full chapters at once; therefore, I figure that such a format as this would be most convenient for interpretation.

Alarms blared across the city as the soft blanket of night fell over its streets. Flashes of red and blue lit up the skies, circling from near the tips of lightning rods off of skyscrapers like the lights of a ghastly, but modernized port lighthouse. Police cars, white vans, and people raced along the roads, panicked chatter loud over the cacophony of wailing sirens as citizens booked it towards their nearest refuge.

Crouching on his ankles and knees, a young man with startling, acidic, lime green eyes watched the ensuing chaos with a deep frown. Thick, weary furrows wore into his brows as he grimaced, turning his attention to the heavens.

Far above the flashing lights, birds of the higher sky raved and riled. In the distance, beyond the gradient of higher to lower rise buildings, in all directions, the pounding gait of hundreds, perhaps thousands of grimm flocking to the panic like moths to an open flame echoed. A sense of horror welled up through the air, rising towards him, energizing his ectoplasm. He tuned out the disgust he felt towards the notion, the reality that he, as a ghost, was feeding off of it.

The FentonWorks Earpiece FentonDisguiseRing he wore on his left helix buzzed, and a static-concealed, broken up voice spoke within his ear canal itself.

“ _Danny!_ ” Samantha Manson, his colleague and old teammate panicked. “ _What the hell is happening in Vale?_ ”

He grunted, sending a little electric shock from his core to activate his own earpiece.

“Well, from the broadcast that everyone just received, it looks like trainees are murdering each other and Amity Arena was just hijacked.”

He turned in the direction of Beacon, staying hunched low even if no grimm could sense him in his ghostly form.

“There’s also a giant dragon grimm flying towards Beacon.” He squinted his eyes. “Like, a really, really big bastard. Fuck.”

“ _And to think you wanted to enjoy the Vytal Festival as a vacation_ ,” Tucker Foley, another member of his old team, joked.

“ _Tucker!_ ” Sam scolded. “ _Danny. I know that we all agreed not to let Wes in on Team Phantom, but last I knew he was in the city with you. It seems that the normal communication towers are shot. I know that there’s no stopping you from getting involved, but keep an eye out in case you run into any other huntsmen or huntresses, okay?_ ”

Danny rolled his eyes.

“ _Seriously, man_ ,” Tucker chimed in. “ _Whatever the fuck just happened, this is on a whole new level from what we’re used to_.”

“Guys, don’t forget that I’m already dead. It’s not like these things can do me any worse than other spirits can, let alone the tamer grimm of Vale.”

Most people wouldn’t be joking around at a time like this. Danny, however, was dead. Not just dead inside, no, but actually, physically, dead. It really tended to put things into perspective when one was dead. Nothing happening was fine, but if he could joke directly post mortem, then he figured he could also remain a little loose in the current circumstances. Ghost or not, his human brain’s stress would draw grimm to him if he let it get wack.

“ _Dude, just be careful_.”

Danny huffed affectionately, boring his sight back down upon the street below.

“Alright. I’m not sure whether I’ll be fighting this one as a huntsman or a ghost, but you’ve got my word. Love you.”

Tucker made gross smooching sounds into his mic as Sam tried to laugh, tried being the keyword. Whatever the fresh hell was happening, it was as they had just said: on a whole new level from what any of them were used to dealing with.

“ _Be safe, please?”_ Sam begged _. “And whatever else you do, don’t change within public view,_ no matter what _.”_

That brought the frown back to Danny’s face.

“No promises,” he replied, then, taking a deep breath, he allowed his full transformation to form.

A sweep of cold, white energy rippled along his body like the expansion of aura, turning white hair to black and dead, pupil-less, toxic green eyes to glowing blue. All at once, the coldness of death seeped through his skin. It wasn’t as though it had vanished, not at all; it was natural in his ghost form, but as a human with a body, he could _feel_ the bone deep chill on a different level. No matter how long it had been, no matter how used to it he was, it was unnatural.

Reaching out with a black gloved hand, he flung himself off of the building that he’d watched from atop, freefalling down towards the masses.

Madeline and Jack Fenton were ghost hunters, not huntresses or huntsmen. They worked against the supernatural and the paranormal, avoiding the fairytale-esque creatures of grimm like the plague.

Rotten, alternative spirits of the veil, arisen not from death but from non-creation, they’d hypothesized the grimm were. Sufficiently combatted, unlike the dead of the living. Two thirds of the same pie, but with vastly differing sources, unlike the tie between the living and the undead.

When Beacon fell and all broadcasting signals but their own anti-ghost, veil-reliant communications were cut, they were stunned. Huntresses and huntsmen were far more common than ghost hunters, seemingly perhaps not having the entire issue of grimm covered; no, the destruction of so many outreach towns and lives clearly denied such, clearly, but--.

Perhaps they should have paid more attention to the issue of the grimm, after all.

“Danny!” Maddie yelled suddenly, jolting from her position hunched over a map in the living room, trying to figure out just how on Earth such a disaster as was occurring at that very moment could have happened.

That was right. Her son wasn’t in or around Mistral, where it would be safer during these trying times. No, he was in the epicenter of danger, the eye of the storm. He was in Vale, not far from Beacon or Amity Arena at all.

With a sick feeling in her gut, she knew exactly what he would be doing, where he would be headed.

“Jack!” she cried out, hearing her husband drop a stack of plates onto the floor as he undoubtedly came to the same realization.

Immediately, both whipped out their FentonScrolls, flipping swiping up on the FentonReceivers that they’d custom created for ghost hunting ease of use. The devices rang out for a few minutes as first Jazz, then Danny joined in on the family call.

“Danny!” Maddie yelled first. “If you go out there right now, I swear to the gods-!”

With a sense of dread, she realized that she could hear the wailing of Vale’s sirens in the background, the distinct murmur of background noise that in all other circumstances should have been fully tuned out.

“ _It’s aight, mom,”_ Danny returned cooly, his voice jumping a little in the middle as though he were strenuously moving.

She bit back a whimper. Oh, no. No, no, no. There was no way her son was going to—but he was. He was a huntsman, so of course he was going to fight even this, whatever ‘this’ may be.

A _sabotage_. A planned destruction, likely orchestrated by the very ghosts that they fought on the daily, using the grimm as a combined force of higher destruction. The ghosts wouldn’t even necessarily need to be all too powerful to encourage the grimm further, with all of the panic that that- that voice, that woman or spirit or, or whoever she was had caused.

“Daniel, I know that you have pride in your job as a huntsman,” she heard Jack begin, and breathed out in relief at his more serious partaking than was usual, “but this is not something that a fresh _huntsman_ should try taking on. You need to get to your nearest grimm refuge.”

“ _Dad, mom, Danny,”_ Jazz cut in. “ _This is_ not _the time for ghost hunter versus huntsman rivalry_. _Danny, if you’re out there, you need to focus on what you’re doing. Dad, mom, tell him you love him and quit distracting the noob in life or death situations._ ”

Danny gave a snort, which Maddie chocked up to his growing ever more morbid sense of humor. She and his father had no idea why it began, but it had, and she personally blamed the sacrifice-your-life gallows humor of Haven Academy. The internet wasn’t far behind in placement.

“ _Thanks, Jazz_ ,” Danny bit back sarcastically. There was a distinct yell of “ _Sir!_ ” likely addressed to him. “ _Listen, I love you all, but I’ve gotta go. Don’t jump out into the streets to fight ghosts right now, because I can’t imagine that there isn’t a fear toll everywhere. I’ll catch up with you soon_.”

Maddie quivered.

“ _Heed your own words, Danny-boy,_ ” Jack murmured.

Danny left the call. Maddie stood up, took a few steps forward, and collapsed.

“Jazz?” she asked.

“ _Mm-hmm_?” her daughter replied. The sound was muffled.

“Please, stay safe. I know that you have eyes on Danny moreso even than we, and. I know that we’re not perfect as parents, and that probably has something to do with it, but please. I know that you’re in school right now, and you want to help everyone, and there are probably fellow grad students in a panic, but you can’t hang around with them to get yourself killed.”

There was silence on the other end of the receiver for a moment as Jazz tried to formulate and construct her response, and then:

“ _I’m a budding psychologist, mother. Beyond this being a potential career building breakthrough moment, I have a job to do, same as Danny and same as you.”_

That was it. The last straw. Maddie’s heart sunk in her chest as she sobbed.

“Please. Please, please be safe. Please stay safe. I love you. I love you and your brother so much. I—I can’t. Please be safe.”

A warm, huge hand came to rest on her shoulder, Jack gazing down comfortingly, his other holding up his FentonScroll to his ear.

Again, there was silence, and then Jazz, too, sounded as though she were in tears.

“ _I will, Mom, Dad. I love you.”_

With that, Jazz left the call. Jack clicked off his scroll, tossing it (in an attempt at gently) onto the couch. He eased himself down to Maddie, stroking a hand up and down her back as she fought to breathe.

Everything would be fine. This wasn’t fine.

Vlad Masters sat in his study with his legs kicked up onto his desk, stunned. While he’d known that _something_ was coming, while he'd heard it whispered by spirits on the wind, he’d never expected something as massive as this.

If he wasn’t careful, the collateral damage might even reach his companies.

He picked up his scroll, the screen on his computer having gone red, a single checker piece glowing in the center. Tapping on its screen and scrolling through names, he searched. He raised up his scroll to his ear. There was nothing. Not the soft sound of transmission, not the ringing of his call going through… ‘lesser’ channels, nothing at all.

He pulled it away from his ear and glared at it, then lobbed it onto one of several stacks of papers that, along with his leg, crowded his desk. His cat stared at him curiously from her velvet-cushioned chair across the room. He chanced a glance out the dark green-curtained windows, watching as a daring grimm soared downwards through the air towards lower Mistral.

Well, that was certainly different. Most grimm would never dare come even remotely near to his domain, or anywhere he was in the vicinity of. His constant ‘ghastly aura’ ensured it. He’d trained it for years for specifically that purpose, honing it so that he could fluctuate his intimidation to different degrees and beings.

 _Well, damn it all_.

He threw his leg over his desk, leaping to the other side and striding towards the heavyset wood-plated iron doors of his office and intangibly walking directly through them. Just outside, a tiny maid let out a sharp gasp, not having expected his appearance. He glanced down at her questioningly, quirking his brow.

“Was there something you needed?” he asked, his voice rich and smooth despite the catastrophe taking place in Vale.

“S-Sir!” she squeaked. Her golden retriever ears laid back against the top of her head, her green eyes wide and her freckles stark against her panic-paled skin.

He waited.

“I came to inform you of a-an audience request from Jacques Schnee, issued during the… that woman’s--!”

He shifted his aura to induce her silence, nodding thoughtfully and ignoring the locking of her knees, the tension of her stance as her fear intensified.

“Leave it on my desk; I’ll review it in a bit. It would seem that the communication towers are down, so I’ll have to reply by ground or air mail. He'll hardly notice a delay if my response is sent out within an hour or a day with all of the confusion that'll soon occur.”

He inwardly snorted.

_Yeah, right._

“For now,” he continued after a moment, taste testing the air for any ghastly presences beyond his own _, '_ “prepare one of my bikes. I’m going into the city to pay visit to a few…,” at this, he actually snarled, “ _acquaintances_.”


	2. 0:1:2 First Stop of the Master

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This fic is going to be put out with zero chapter length consistency control. I'm taking this places, but this semester is going to kick my ass and beyond telling the story, I simply do not have the energy to commit to a defined structure.

Madeline Fenton wasn’t stupid. When the eccentric, obsessed billionaire Vlad Masters rode his million-dollar bike into her driveway, travelling solo without even a security ensemble during the most emotionally taxing night that Remnant had seen since the Great War, there was something even more wrong than the grimm that were already ensuing. There had to be something…. ghostly occurring.

Of course, she wasn’t ignorant to the man’s continued presence in the spectral community, hard as he tried to keep his hand out of sight. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise her if he nearly commandeered the field, given his lack of an ability to let go of things that touched him. The portal that he, her husband, and herself had created had done much more than merely brush by his sleeve—no, it had cursed him. Of that, she was sure.

So, when he slipped off his helmet and slithered up to her door, her own hand was on the handle of her gun before he could even ring her bell.

Violently ripping the door open, she snarled.

“Get in, if you’re here. What the hell are you thinking, coming out on a night like this?”

Taken aback, he let out a soft mock gasp. Without pause, she grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him across the threshold into her home, slamming the door shut behind him.

“Jack!” she called out. “Vlad’s here.”

From the kitchen, her husband’s voice boomed.

“Coming, honey!”

Chances were that he hadn’t even processed her words. Unperturbed, she continued to glare at their old friend.

“What the hell were you thinking? Did you drive here alone?”

Vlad smirked down at her. She swore that his almost faunus-like canines gleamed.

“Why Madeline,” he said, his voice silky smooth, “I’m touched that you’re so concerned.”

She raised her right arm and pointed at his chest before poking him rudely, digging her nail into his sleek black turtleneck so that it would hurt. He continued to smile that infuriating half-smirk, unfazed.

“I swear to the Gods, Vlad Masters, I swear on the name of my firstborn child--!”

Just then, Jack bustled out from the kitchen, a crumble of brownie on his cheek.

“Why, Vladdie!” he greeted, putting in all efforts to appear as cheerful as ever.

Madeline winced.

“What brings you out here on a night like this?”

Vlad sidestepped Madeline, much to her chagrin, gently pushing her finger away from his chest and swaggering over to sink down onto his usual guest chair: a green velvet wing chair that they’d had since their first apartment, back when it was the three of them against the world.

“Actually, Jack, Maddie,” he started, his voice dropping coarser as a grave expression wore down on his face, “this ‘night like this’ is exactly why I’m here. I can’t stay for long, but--.”

Maddie kicked him lightly in the leg, and he let out a gasp.

“What do you mean, you can’t stay for long?” she demanded, thrashing her arm behind her. “There are _grimm_ out there. By all means, it’s something more than a miracle that you weren’t killed on your way here.”

At that, he grimaced, but there was something off-kilter to it, a sort of feral, arrogant, and knowing energy, a glint behind what she by now recognized as a dulled façade. She didn’t like it, but she also didn’t know enough to call him out on it. She… neither she nor Jack did, but after he finally re-established communication with them after a decade post-hospice, they weren’t willing to ask.

They weren’t willing to ask, but they were studying it. Studying him.

“As both the mayor legal proctor of Amity Township in accordance with Mistral,” he gently explained, “I have a duty to denizens such as yourselves to report to the emergency council established in case of immediate, random, kingdom-threatening circumstances. The meeting will begin in approximately an hour’s time. After that, I need to get in contact with Professor Lionheart of the _huntsmen_ academy.”

Neither she nor Jack missed the way his words hissed around ‘huntsmen.’

She stared him down, refusing to loosen up. Finally, Jack sighed behind her, moving to knead her shoulders.

“And why, then, did you stop here?” he asked, meeting Vlad’s critical gaze with his tired own.

“I came to discuss the circumstances of your youngest,” Vlad murmured, dropping his eyes to the floor. He looked back up. “Daniel’s currently in Vale, near the Arena, is he not?”

Madeline nodded slowly.

“Yeah. He wanted to take a few weeks’ worth of vacation and hit up the Vytal Festival. Something about networking and hats.”

Vlad nodded as though the latter part of the statement made sense. To an extent, it did. When Daniel perceived clout in something, it was difficult to deter him. Vendors at the Vytal Festival varied each year and sold wide assortments of limited items and designs. Not everything unique was found there, but most items could certainly be called such. This included something that Vlad himself had recently (meaning, within the last few years) taken up an interest in: specialized combination dust.

It was rumored that some underground vendors allowed clientele to experiment with their resources, for a hefty cost, under the designation of “hatters,” which had stemmed from the stylized hats they wore to indicate what they were selling. What with Vlad’s partnership with Schnee Corps, he would never need to rely on such shady dealers and half-baked comprehension again. Young Daniel, however….

He frowned. He would keep this to himself. It was highly unlikely that either of the Fenton adults had ever been exposed to such terminology. Daniel had a much higher likelihood, and through him, Jasmine, as well.

He cursed under his breath, shifting his eyes to glare at the painting above the sofa on the opposite side of the room. It was a nice, pastel, swirly thing, a holy remake of the ‘theorized’ hallucinogenic rift between the worlds of the living and the dead, the physical and the astral.

“There’s no way he’s sitting duck in that chaos,” he thought aloud. He glanced up at Madeline. “You know your son better than anyone. Just what, pray tell, do you think he’ll do once all of this is over, provided he makes it through?”

 _There’s almost zero chance that he won’t make it through_ , Vlad kept to himself. Halfas were tough; they were tougher than ghosts, humans, and grimm alike.

Madeline shifted her weight onto one leg while Jack pulled her against him. She leaned back into his touch, pulling his arms around her.

“Danny-boy’s strong,” Jack spoke slowly, still trying to conceal his uncertainty.

Vlad’s heart almost ached for the man. He almost sympathized. He didn’t.

“If he makes it through this, and he will,” his voice got stronger as he kept talking, kept going, gaining traction, “he’ll most probably try to go after that woman. Ever since the summer before he started his huntsman school, he’s been more…,” he abruptly stopped, as though trying to feel around, to taste test his words, “vicious. He’s become a fighter. He isn’t unnecessarily violent, but he considers himself a protector. He won’t let this slide.”

Vlad leaned back in his seat, sliding his hands down the thighs of his pants to grip at his knees.

“That’s what I was afraid you would say,” he admitted.

He had never known Daniel before the boy was made spectral, had never witnessed a Daniel that wasn’t a fighter. More often than not, he was on the opposite end of the kid’s weapon. Still, even if he were a graduated huntsman, a _halfa_ graduated huntsman with the benefit of doubt of youth’s experience on his side, something about the woman’s voice left a bad, mellow ring in Vlad’s ear. There was something wrong with her. Something other than her confidence, than her maneuver, felt… powerful, in a way that he couldn’t interpret. That was saying something, for it to stand out above the move that she had so much more obviously made.

There weren’t many things that one such as he couldn’t comprehend, and he, for one, wasn’t excited to learn what this might be.

He breathed in deeply, drawing his hands up close again and crossing his legs so that one ankle rested over the opposite knee.

“Thankfully, the grimm around Beacon are, for lack of a better term, basic,” he soothed. “However, many are old, and old grimm are large. While in other circumstances those great elders are wise enough to avoid humans, this just might be enough to draw them near.”

His layered eyes flared, between worlds, and he could see a city burning, buildings crumbling. Sirens wailed through the streets. The air was thick with smoke, a soupy smog that failed to conceal the corpses torn and desecrated just within sight.

He instinctually twisted the second layer of the silver ring on his index finger, slowly rubbing it back and forth with his thumb. Energy flowed at the ends of his nerves, a swamping illness threatening to roll across his cells.

He wondered if Daniel’s energy was humming or buzzing, in that moment, sparking from the ion channels of his membranes. Perhaps his bones would freeze into white dust and then shrivel were he to transform. It was different for the both of them, his comparative results had determined. He still wasn’t certain if it was the result of their cores being different, or simply an individualized trait of their kind.

This time, it was Jack who narrowed his eyes.

“What are you trying to say?” he questioned, voice dipping dangerously.

Vlad snapped back to attention.

“I’m saying that there’s going to be a lot of death and carnage tonight, especially in Vale, if not only there, and with the sudden deaths of many, there are bound to be spirits unleashed in this catastrophe.”

He leaned forward, nearly growling. His eyes flashed. Madeline caught it.

“It’s a good thing that your son has experience dealing with ghosts. Their youth can be… ‘violent,’ in their realizations, as I seem to recall.”

Madeline sucked in a breath.

“The veil in Amity is ever thinner,” she murmured. “And, in Vale….”

He nodded.

“There may become a site worth investigating the potential of building another portal.”

Madeline blinked.

“That’s not where I was going with that, at all,” she backtracked, a look of surprise on her face.

Vlad stared for a moment, then realized what he’d done.

 _Fucking, Gods be damned_.

“Sorry,” he apologized, raising his hands in surrender, “business brain took over for a moment. Ghost youth can be violent, and there will be undoubtedly a great many freshdead kingdom-wide tonight. Your son is in either the eye of the storm or the helix, depending on not the Grimm in Vale, but whomever orchestrated all of,” he gestured, “this.”

Jack sighed, letting Maddie go and rubbing his forehead with a large hand.

“Thanks for the reassurance.”

Vlad flashed him a winning, honest smile.

“That was my build-up. Now, it’s time for reassurance.”

“Oh?” Maddie asked, perking up again from where she’d finally relaxed for what Vlad assumed had been the first time since Amity Arena broadcasted the undefeatable Pyrrha Nikos seemingly killing Atlas’s Penny Polendina.

Vlad stood, adjusting his v-neck coat. Both Fentons took a step back.

“I happen to own a bunker lab of sorts in Vale, about say, one hundred and fifty miles or so away from Beacon academy. I doubt that you Fentons don’t have one way or another to keep in contact with each other, so I figured that I would pop by on my way to offer up the entry code so that Daniel might access and operate from within. I’ve got at least five terrain vehicles within the garage, and it’s fully equipped to house a decent twenty or so for a year.

“Daniel may not be my biggest fan, and he should wish to stop by here before doing anything drastic, but none of us can be certain that he’ll do such. I happen to have an agent in the area who I myself can get in contact with via his own semblance who can’t get him access, as I’ve filtered our network, but I can tell you how they can get in.”

“And why would you do that?” Madeline demanded.

_She was wonderful, a protector all on her own. She always had been. Her family could burn for all he cared. He could replace them. He loved her._

“Um, because he’s my godson?” Vlad questioned, pushing back the visceral whispers tugging from every angle of his mind, calling him to his obsession.

She crossed her arms, eyeing him up and down. Ever since he’d reintroduced himself to his old pals, they’d been suspicious. He was perfectly aware of why. He’d tried to hide his… nature nouveau, though it certainly could no longer be considered new, but they hadn’t been fooled. His sharp interior always glinted through his edges.

“V-man,” Jack started, now more openly uncertain, “I want to believe that you mean the best, but you haven’t exactly been the same since….”

Vlad raised a brow.

“Masters Incorporations,” Madeline finished.

“Vladco,” Jack said, at the same time.

"Not to mention this 'agent,' you now speak of," Maddie added in.

They hadn’t been there for his recovery, nor his rise. They didn’t know. They knew that something had changed, but they didn’t know. They saw a politician in him, a selfish businessman, a husk of who he had been, reborn in brilliant gold and wealth, and they were right. They didn’t know.

He laughed lightly, biting back the harsh bark and stab of betrayal he felt. His fingers didn’t curl into fists, instead splaying in front of him as he gestured.

“Now, there’s business, and then there’s human life,” he chortled. “I would hardly withhold my support from your children for any price. I have agents in all four kingdoms at all times in case of emergency crisis. They're not up to anything... unsettling.”

Madeline stared at him. He felt sickened, the thoughts from earlier creeping up his spine, curling behind his ears.

_You would lead him to his death. You will lead him to his death. You need to know if you can die._

_Madeline is mine. Madeline and Jack are mine._

He started. If Madeline and Jack were his, then surely, their children must be too. He’d had this inner debate many a time. For all that he tried, even with the grudge that he held…

 _All mine. The Fentons are mine. They're_ my _family too.  
_

His obsession wailed in his ears like a petulant child.

None of them were excluded.

He would die to defend their puny little lives.

Honestly, he was surprised that they weren’t falling apart right now. Surely, the tear streaks on Madeline’s face, which he only finally now noticed, shouldn’t have abided. Perhaps the spectral emotional energy output by the portal…? They could have adapted, to an extent. It might work as a form of grimm invisibility. The damned creatures never went after the Fentons, as far as he could tell.

He would have to consider an experiment.

For now, he glanced up at the clock, spinning a full circle on his ring.

There were only fifteen minutes left to the hour. He had other places to go, yes, yes he did. Whether they were convinced or not, it was time to leave.


	3. 0:1:3 There Were At Least Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Vale. We've got grimm in the streets, grimm in the streets, and... grimm in the streets. Well, fuck.

It was probably going to be a better choice not to get his ghost form associated with the current catastrophe, Danny reasoned on his way down. That being said, as a half-ghost liminal being of… some kind, his semblance had mutated into his ghost form. Well, according to his parents research, his ghost form _would be_ his semblance with a tiny copy overlay of Danny’s mind imprinted upon it.

Truth be told, his human form didn’t ‘have’ an aura or a semblance anymore; those _were_ his ghost form. However, he could still access them in his human form, to differing degrees of transformation, which honestly, was close enough to the technique of the living that he could pass… reasonably enough, with the cover of his weapon.

Most hunters and huntresses externalized their weapons. His own team back at Haven Academy had been full of examples of this. First, there was Tucker, who fought staff with a pda that could automate it to split in half and form half-circle blades as he needed. The staff, when supplied with dust, or supplemented with aura, could either blast or slash different forms of damage, slowing time or raising gravity with the right combinations. His PDA, on the other hand… well, it came in a little more handy than perhaps it should have whenever the team needed to stay off camera.

Sam’s weapon, on the other hand, was elaborate in a less technical way. Well, comparatively, at least. She fought with a dagger that she could twist into a sickle and a giant bat riddled with thorns and nails, both inlaid with dust that she could either passively use or externalize along either blade or bat at any moment. Her boots and gloves gave her as much of an advantage as her weapons themselves, tennis shoes that could rise into boots along her legs through vine via her semblance.

The team leader of DWST, as they had been called, had perhaps the most versatile weapon. Wes Weston’s weapon was something of a mystery; the guy had always been finding new tactical advantages through it. With his semblance….

Danny shook his head. He needed to focus. Pulling against the very molecules of the air around him with his semblance, subtly activating the bright purple dust along his sleek black jumpsuit, he dug the claws beneath his boots against the wall and propelled himself down to the earth faster, throwing his arms in front of him and shooting an ectoblast from his gloves to flip himself over and to the ground. His brain itself jogged with the impact as his feet hit the pavement of the street, smoke quickly filling the air around him from a collapsed fire hydrant at on the sidewalk.

The thumps of something large running at him from behind vibrated underfoot, and for a moment, he stood, before turning his head just enough to the side to catch sight of the beast before he swung his leg up and around, finally truly _using_ the dust that he’d brought out along his suit as he bashed it across the head with the studs of his heel, ripping the bony mask from its face in a shower of fiery red, orange, and yellow vicious, fluid sparks.

He grinned, all teeth, baring his ghostly canines for the world to see.

Well, it wasn’t like it would look, considering that it was too busy being infested with demons and ravaged with hellfire.

Carrying forth with his momentum, he flipped himself up onto its back as it reared up, mouth wide in something between a roar and a screech. He dug his fingers through its fur, clawing at its skull through its skin, and whispered behind its fuzzy black ears, “Now go to sleep.”

Instantly, the thing began to dissipate, black smoke rising from its form. Muscle and sinew went quicker than its external body, its liminal form not quite as meant for this world as the shell of its exterior. Then, all at once, its structure collapsed, and he fell down to his feet again in the midst of it, looking out from a wave of heat that warmed his corpse and hazed his sight.

Without even a second to spare for breath, he took off, rolling out of the heat and mist and forward through the street. From down here, he could no longer see the arena; this was okay, though, as he had another job to do for the time being.

He needed to protect the people.

Around the corner, silver glinted in the red hazard lights. His eyes widened as he had only a fraction of a second to react before a beam of bright blue cold electricity burst directly left of his ear. He yelped, leaping forward toward it and attacking out of instinct. It kept firing, rounds always just shy of hitting him, his form distorting to avoid them every time.

These were Atlesian robots. The future of the fight against grimm, programmed to prioritize the survival of humanity. So, why was…?

His eyes narrowed. There was a chance that they weren’t recognizing him as human; however, if that were the case, the scanners that Tucker had ordered from Atlas should have picked up on his presence as well. Half-ghosts and grimm were both liminal, but there were differences.

In the center of the thing’s chest, its motif glared red. He wanted to think that it might just be as simple as possession, perhaps a recently undead soul lashing out in their confusion, in their pain, but after that broadcast—after that _woma_ n--!

A second one rounded the corner, the holsters on its arms spinning as it raised its arms as though to invite a hug.

This wasn’t possession. For one reason or another, Atlesian robots were attacking him. They were attacking civilians!

He launched himself directly into the first, grabbing its head with his hand and sending a current of white hot electricity through it, instantly frying its drivers. The thing crumbled, wiring sparking from under its metal plating. A steam of green arose from its many seals; he must’ve damaged its dust storage.

 _Fuck_.

A zip of white-hot pain seared the side of his neck, and he grunted, stumbling to the side and raising a hand on instinct. He spun clumsily on the ball of his foot, trying not to lose his balance. The pain didn’t go away, burning and eating at his skin like radiation. Once again he bared his fangs at his opponent, new one though this might be.

“Now just what the hell is wrong with you?” he snarled, a mix of red and green spittle flying from his lips.

It was the other robot, as he’d expected, but that didn’t excuse the _misfortune_ that befell him due to the unfortunate lack of a certain _Tucker_ being around.

The thing simply clicked at him in response, gearing up its holsters again. He watched as they spun faster and faster, picking up steam.

“Oh, no you won’t,” he ordered, lunging forward and tackling the thing to the ground.

It kicked up with its knee, hitting him hard in the abdomen, the force knocking the wind out of his lungs. It was a true blessing that he no longer needed to actually breathe.

With as much feral bastard energy as he could muster, he reared back, raising up his arm, clenching his hand into a fist, and then punched down _hard_ , metal crumbling and flying up around his arm. One piece cut across just above his eye, and he blinked hard, trying and failing to will away the red and green.

In the center of its chest, a red sphere with wires coming and going pulsated up at him, and he stared, before curling his fingers around it.

 _“Sam,”_ he spoke through primarily his mind, paying to the Gods that his girlfriend and former teammate would be able to hear him through the veil at such a large distance.

Suddenly, the world turned purple. Hues of violet and pink shone to highlight the spectrum of color; time itself seemed to slow almost to a complete stop.

_He was in the woods. The leaves of the trees forming a thick canopy over his head were black; the trunks were a pale lavender. The world smelled at once both fresh and sickly sweet. In front of him, a lean man stood, frowning down at the old, boxy device in his hands._

_Danny knew that he was frowning, could exactly imagine and mimic the expression on his boyfriend’s face. He could practically feel the furrow of his brow, could trace his forehead wrinkles, hold his hands at the side of his face._

_Suddenly, the man turned around, staring him dead in the eyes._

_“Danny?” he asked, incredulous._

_Danny held out his hand, his palm closed around something glowing bright bubblegum pink. He unfurled his fingers, silent. He couldn’t speak. Why couldn’t he speak?_

_Tucker frowned at his hand, squinting his eyes. Couldn’t he see it? There was a sudden twinkle. He saw it. He approached slowly, cautiously. Danny’s heart thumped in his chest. He didn’t have time._

Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!

_Then Tucker’s hand closed around his own._

No! _Danny soundlessly screamed._ Look at what I’m holding!

_He lifted his own eyes to meet Tucker’s own; Tucker gasped, suddenly, his eyes flashing in that same pink, and the illusion broke._

There was a metal clamp around his jaw, sealing his mouth closed, and a gun pressed against his cervical vertebrae.

“You,” a feminine voice hissed into his ear. “What are you doing here?”

With a start, he realized that he must have transformed in the middle of the street. This was a relatively new trick of his and Sam’s, and he had just pushed off into uncharted territory in a combination tactic that by all means should very much not have worked.

He cursed mentally, tensing beneath his captor, before he twisted his head around as far as it could naturally go, and then some, intentionally cracking the bone within and beyond magnum foramen in a creepy show of cheek. He wiggled his brows, then, activating the ice dust in his human form’s suit, slipped behind from beneath her.

Finally seeing her, if from the back, Danny did a spit-take in his clamp. Which, to be honest, was really fucking gross, seeing as all that came out was more spit, blood, and ectoplasm. Briefly pulling his jaw and upper neck portion of his corpse to the surface of the veil, he reached up, ripping the damned thing off before shoving that part of him back into the deeps.

“Valerie Grey?” he exclaimed. “Just what in the nine hells are you doing here?”

She spun, her gun suddenly centimeters from the tip of his nose.

“ _Phantom_ ,” she hissed. “Daniel, fucking, Phantom.”

Through the darkened window of her visor, he could see the red flames licking up at her hair from her eyes.

With an enraged scream, she lunged, tackling him right back down into the cement. He squeaked, struggling to push her off without dealing any damage, eyes darting back and forth along the street in case there were any stragglers present to witness.

“Valerie, Valerie!” he whisper-yelled, grasping her chin and forcing her head far above her shoulders, her neck tilted back at a painful angle. “Stop! Please!”

“Shut the fuck up, you lying _ghost_!” she growled, digging the clawed fingers of her own suit through the material of his own.

Bright, glowing, lime green ectoplasm shone from where she actively clawed, forcing her fingers deeper through his muscle. It dripped down his arm.

“ _Stop!_ ” he finally yelled, pounding his other fist against the ground as he emphasized with a minor call of his wail.

All at once, she stilled above him, her fearful face staring down at his own, still angry; horrified.

“Whatever the hell is happening here is much more important than me. I’m trying to extinguish the grimm. What are you doing?”

He could feel her heart pulsing through her fingertips in his arm, and wow, that was not a sensation that he liked at all.

“How do I know that you’re not part of this?” she finally whimpered, her voice cracking at the end.

He paled. As he further retuned his vision to see through her visor, he could make out tears leaking tracks down her face, heating into steam with the fire that burned from her eyes and now began to track across her skin.

The red huntress had held her title long before it had become associated with her alias as the ghost huntress; it was a reference to her semblance and how it burned tracelines through her opponents, peeling away their skin in fleshy tracks, superheating their very blood until it boiled them from the inside out.

Unfortunately, it was a semblance that was much more geared towards opposing humans, not grimm or ghosts. Her suit as the Red Huntress rather than red huntress more than covered for that issue in a pinch, though, as she had learned to call upon the abilities of it from its ghostly origin much in the same way as Danny, in human form, could with his core.

He stared up at her at a loss for words. There was nothing that he could say in his defense, nothing that in this form of his, she would ever believe. Even were he to reveal himself, to restart his heart and breathe, there were no words that he could say, that he could possibly string together, to convince her that he wasn’t the enemy.

So, in classic avoidance style, he sank down into the ground, pretending that he couldn’t hear her disbelieving, enraged screech.

Instead, he let himself just keep sinking deeper.

Suddenly, he wasn’t in the ground anymore, but beneath it. Around him, fallen rocks and rubble lay on the ground. He touched down curiously, trying desperately to pull together a sense of curiosity to replace the sudden apathy, the sudden emptiness in his chest.

He flared his ghostly aura bright, illuminating the space around him. A single corpse lay on the ground, prone; he approached it wearily, crouching down and pressing two fingers against its neck, searching for a pulse point. There was nothing, but he had already known. He would have sensed it if there was anything living down here.

He sat back on his heels with his knees spread, humming lightly as he began to rock back and forth. This wasn’t good. He was going into A State. This really wasn’t the time to go into A State. He wondered if Tucker had seen the pink. He wondered if the pink had gotten Tucker too, had somehow programmed itself into his mind.

That was how Tucker’s semblance worked, after all. Never minding entirely that even Technus had been unable to successfully possess him, Tucker’s semblance was truly something special. Any and all signals around him (well, technical, not social), he could interpret. He could interpret them, manipulate them, halt them, and even project his own. He was a walking VPN and a hazard that was, to an extent, banned from Atlas.

He wasn’t officially banned. He was just ‘unrecommended for entry,’ which, when all was said and done, meant the same thing.

Danny breathed in. The white mask on the man’s face glowed lightly green in his own aura, reflecting back at him a tone of melon.

There had been grimm that came through here, not long ago. This must have been the train wreck that he had read about back in Mistral. Vale’s mafia headman had been at the helm of it, according to the official report, along with a faction of the White Fang listed under, if not directly segmented by, Adam Taurus.

He breathed out, then reached down again, gently tracing over the corpse’s gaunty face. It was a gruesome thing, truly, with its skin sunken in and muscle and skin atrophying.

“What would you do if you were here now?” he asked, gently.

There was no response. This was a corpse, not a ghost.

A sense of calm washed over him as he stared at it, tapping a gentle pattern against its cheek. It was… nice, soft and intemperate and unmoving, dead. He gazed curiously up through the slices on the mask over its eyes, just barely catching sight of wide, blank eyes.

He had those eyes too, when he didn’t actively manipulate them.

What had he expected? Nothing. What did he get?

Suddenly, a bright white light exploded from directly behind him, shining off of the rock walls, all-consuming.

He gasped, dropping fully to the floor, burying his eyes in his hands directly on the corpse’s chest.

“I’ll admit that I didn’t expect to see you here, Fenton,” came a cocky, familiar voice.

Shock flooded through Danny’s system. He pulled himself back up slowly, rising to a stand, trying very hard not to freak out at the fact that he had just essentially buried his hands and face in a _corpse’s_ chest.

Jokes about his human form aside, and ghosts aside, this was a whole new level of disgusting.

He spun violently on his heel, falling naturally into a fighting stance.

“Weston?” he declared, defensive.

The large, clear ‘glass’ orb in front of him, glowing in its faint lavender light, recondensed into a hyper-thin plate, spinning in front of his face before slicing through the air into Wes’s giant magnifying glass of death.

The man stepped out from the shadows, seeming to have entered from a drain hole in the street while Danny hadn’t been paying attention.

While Danny had been fixating on a corpse, asking it questions as though it were a living being, lost in its death, embracing the comfort that his own couldn’t provide.

“You left Red up there quite unhappy, y’know,” the man teased. “I still don’t understand why you don’t trust at least her, if not the rest of us.”

Danny’s pupils flashed blue; the overall effect displaying two thirds of absolute RGB.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed.

Wes raised his hands in mock surrender.

“Scary ghost mode now, right, sorry,” he apologized. He didn’t sound genuine.

Danny wondered if he was still holding onto the grudge of how Danny had mocked him for four straight years at Haven, disproving his theory time and again while changing his forms in their very quad.

Well, it wasn’t as if Weston hadn’t already figured it out, even before he’d unlocked his semblance in his attempts to prove it.

Danny stared, wary. Wes stared back, holding his gaze, challenging. Finally, Danny gave in, heaving a sigh and dropping back down to his earlier crouch, albeit this time facing away from the corpse.

If he looked back, he wasn’t certain that he would be able to look away again before the night was up.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, simply.

Wes stalked forward, shrugging his shoulders, then stopped a few feet away. He looked up at the drainage hole that he’d come in from.

“Same as you, I suppose,” he answered, the cold leaking from his voice as he slipped into a more personable stance.

Danny wasn’t fooled. While Weston wasn’t actively embodying the ice cold that he’d approached him with, he was always as sharp and clear as ice. Now was no different.

Then, in a surprising move, Wes dropped down in front of him, in a display of mirroring his image. He sat his weapon, Seer, on the ground next to him. Danny stared at it in shock.

“You’ll get dust on your lens,” he said.

Weston shrugged.

“And?”

Suddenly, he threw back his head with a laugh.

“Fucking hell, everything’s gone to it here,” he cackled.

Danny stared, frozen.

His former leader was having a breakdown.

Well, it weren’t as though he hadn’t just been.

“Holy fuck. Holy shit. Okay. This is a fucking thing, isn’t it?”

He raised a hand to wipe at his eyes and Danny realized that he had been crying, not laughing. His laughter and sobs always were weirdly similar.

“Did you come for the festival?” he asked.

Danny continued to stare for a moment, transfixed, before shaking himself out of it as he realized that he’d been asked a question.

“Y-yeah,” he stuttered his answer.

Wes nodded his head thoughtfully.

“You always were a nerd,” he decided. His eyes flickered up to meet Danny’s own. “Though, that isn’t what you were here for.”

Danny sighed. Here they fucking went. Here they always fucking went. All conversations with Wes Weston were the same, and it only had gotten worse after he’d unlocked his semblance. ‘And They Were Exposed,’ Wes had called it, before abruptly deciding that they should all begin referencing to him with his surname as punishment for separating themselves as an external team from him. Atwe allowed him to feel transparently for what a person’s motivations were, who they were, what they had done in respective to any particular point that Wes learned about, as well as let him predict all immediate forthcoming attacks during battle, so long as he focused on his opponent in question. He could even determine enemies that he hadn’t prior known existed, and thus feel for their attacks, as long as those he knew of knew of them.

It made him an incredibly worthy opponent. He would’ve been a wonderful addition to Team Phantom, if not for his blatant desire to make it big and profit off of Danny’s identity.

“Relax Schrodinger,” Wes ordered, referring to Danny's 'weapon,' which Wes had 'proposed' the unofficial nickname to.

Actually, it was a whole bullshit scenario in which he was trying to prove that Danny was Phantom, but, y'know. Schemantics. He kept it for the 'irony.'

Instantly, Danny’s suit retracted the dust that he still hadn’t pulled back in, _huh, forgot about that,_ and Danny tensed. Once more, Weston raised a hand in surrender. “Sorry.”

Danny fought back a snarl.

“What do you want, Weston?” he seethed. “Why aren’t you out there fighting?”

Wes brought his hands up to his face then tugged his skin down, revealing the red flesh under his eyelids.

“Why aren’t you? I’m overwhelmed. Everyone’s overwhelmed. I’m a first-year graduated huntsman who came here primarily to try and find you, dropped into whatever political maneuver of Atlas this is--.”

“What?”

Wes initiated his start-ramble, “Clearly, with all of the airships that were here earlier, Atlas was expecting something. Even you could have probably tasted it if you tried. However, that wasn’t my priority, and they certainly weren’t expecting something to this scale, or for whatever’s happened to their bots--.”

“Weston,” Danny cut him off, flashing his eyes again.

Wes immediately shut up.

“What do you mean, you came here trying to find me?”

Danny’s voice wavered dangerously. Wes stared at him. His heartbeat sped up in his chest, and Danny could feel it. He could taste through his skin, with his ectoplasm singing… fear. It wasn’t the same kind that Valerie had projected earlier, no, it was subtler, but so very peculiar, like cherry toxic waste candy mixed dipped in liquid aspartame and cilantro.

That sounded much less appealing than his ghost form made it seem, his human sense decided. Oh well.

Wes’s adam’s apple dipped as he gulped.

“I was called back by Professor Lionheart not long before Haven’s competitors left for the Vytal Tournament,” he began to explain.

Danny watched his expression carefully, silent, tracing his eyes along his form, taking note of the man’s body language. So far, he seemed to be telling the truth, though Danny would be the first to admit that he kind of sucked.

This, as many soft skills that would help him significantly, fell under Jazz’s domain, not his.

“There was a change in which students they were sending, which is the only thing that he told me directly. Mostly, we sat and ate a few mini cakes and drank tea. He wanted me to help train the noobs this coming year, though he didn’t truthfully believe that it could happen.”

Danny leaned forward, letting his legs give way to his tail, resting his elbows on the dusty, dirty ground. The train tracks of the trail that had only once in recent history been run down here made a cut visible only from above exactly where his head connected to his neck.

“You think Lionheart has something to do with this?” he asked, jumping to conclusions. “Do you think he’s possessed?”

Wes gave him a sharp glare, razing his idea to the ground with a cutting, “No.”

“I don’t think that he’s been possessed,” he elaborated, lifting up his giant magnifying glass and running a finger over its outer ring. “But-.”

Danny sucked in a breath.

“I do think that he’s been compromised.”

“How so?”

Wes gave a crooked, pained smile.

“I… don’t know.”

Danny’s mind went blank. This wasn’t a thing. This hadn’t been a thing, for as long as he’d known Wes.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I completely don’t know,” Weston frowned, before barking out a laugh. “I have no fucking clue. Or at least, I didn’t, until that broadcast.”

Danny frowned.

“You think that that woman has something to do with it?”

Weston shrugged.

“She has something to do with Lionheart, doesn’t she?”

Danny recalled the trepidation that rocked his core as he had listened to her voice, so much deeper than the fear of what she had just done, what she’d accomplished.

Wes fixated on him with a stare, his pupils glaring into Danny’s soul.

“Have you seen her?” he asked.

The world fell away around Danny’s core. His body spun. Everything was gaseous; nothing was and everything rang in true/false.

He hadn’t ever heard her voice before, but had he seen her?

No. He hadn’t.

Abruptly, the effect stopped, and he realized that he was speaking, his mouth repeating, “No, no, _no_ ,” in a mantra.

Wes stared at him in dismay, something Danny couldn’t make out in his eyes, and then suddenly rushed forward, wrapping his arms around his form. Danny fought to close his jaw, his tongue still fighting to form that word through his lips.

He hissed, then howled, breaking through the mantra with an even smaller inclusion of his wail than he’d used on Valerie.

Thank fuck he’d decided to train that in the veil.

“It’s alright, it’s alright, Danny, it’s okay,” Wes was murmuring into his ear, “I’m sorry. It’s a newer development, and I shouldn’t have used it on you, especially not in this form of yours, I’m so sorry, Danny, I’m sorry.”

Shakily, Danny reached up, returning the hug.

“Thw fuwk wuzzit?” he tried, his words slurring together.

“My most recent semblance development,” Wes offered, explaining absolutely nothing.

Danny rolled his eyes, brushing off the—whatever the fuck he had just seen. He’d gone through worse. He’d just have to drink whatever the fuck that was out of his mind and not think about it until it became as familiar as the Veil had, which arguably shouldn’t be familiar at all, and should in fact still be highly horrifying and—oh yeah, he was not going to have a fun time tonight.

It was already night. It had been night. Vale was under attack. Ah, that was. Nice.

Weston pulled back first, coughing politely and putting a fair bit of space between the two of them. Danny sat, dumbfounded, finally in a fully upward position. He looked at the ground in front of him. He’d been laying there just hours ago. Moments ago, probably. Maybe even just seconds.

“We should go help Vale,” he finally murmured.

Weston stared at him, analyzing. Finally, he conceded with a nod.

“You never did give yourself a break,” he commented.

This time, the one to laugh out of place was Danny. It wasn’t a real laugh.

“’There ain’t no rest for the wicked,’” he quoted.

“Fuck off,” Wes instantly responded.

The two stood, brushing dust off of their forms. Weston hefted his wieldy Seer over his shoulder. Danny turned to the ladder on the wall, leading up to a more obvious drain that they could leave from. Alternatively…

He jumped, having not expected it when a hand suddenly closed around his shoulder. He whipped around, his eyes wide.

Wes stood there, expression slightly dumbfounded and slightly hurt, then broke.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, his voice genuine in a way that Danny hadn’t heard it since their initiation four years prior.

“What?” Danny asked, stupefied.

“I’m sorry,” Wes repeated.

They were silent for a moment, then Wes shrugged, looking first down, and then staring directly into Danny’s soul again.

 _Not this fuckshit again,_ Danny internally screeched as he braced himself, but the fall that he expected didn’t come.

Instead, Wes opened his mouth, closed it, like a fish out of water, then continued.

“I’m sorry for how I treated you at Haven. I’m sorry for endangering you, Tucker, and Sam. I’m sorry for pushing my head so far up my own ass that I could only see my own reflection. I’m sorry that I made it even more difficult than it had to be for you to just, exist, let alone fight, I’m sorry-!”

Danny clasped a hand over his mouth, effectively shushing him. In .1 seconds, Weston went from apologetic to enraged.

“Dude, shut up,” he said. “I can’t deal with this right now on top of anything else.”

He turned around, ignoring Weston’s glare boring two eye-sized holes into the back of his head. He reached back and grabbed Weston’s arm, turning them intangible and beginning to lift into the air.

“Also, you can call me Wes again,” Weston permitted.

Danny froze, then soared.


	4. 0:1:4 Forest Freeze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam Manson and Tucker Foley: freshly graduated hunters and a dangerous duo, cleaning up a small section of the woods and plotting out their next move.

Sam clutched at her head, falling to her knees as her vision spun and blackened. She could feel Tucker’s hands grasping at the sides of her face, and on some level she recognized his voice talking to her, his concern washing over her like warm milk and honey. However, she knew better than to try and respond; her mind was spinning, jostling out of control, rippling across the surface of something foreign but not entirely unknown.

Something calm and dark reached out through the veil, grasping her mind gently. She gasped at its sudden surge of urgency, reaching out with her own mental hands to feel. With a start, she realized that it was—!

_“Danny?” she asked, opening her eyes despite her apparent blindness._

_Nonetheless, she could feel the quiet pervading the massive, unbearable hum of the beyond through his being. She could feel the cold of his core; not a cold energy, but a lack of heat, or rather, a vastness with sparks too far to reach across its expanse._

_Slowly, her vision adjusted, stars far-off in the distance in every direction glittering at her in greeting. There was an out-of-place tension to the night, a freakish discontent unwelcome in this strange field of_ Danny _._

_There was no response, beyond a vague sense of comfort wrapping around her, hugging her from all directions, unsmothering._

_Then, she could_ see _through._

_One of her arms was braced against the filthy, broken cement of what should have been a busy city street, the other buried deep in the metallic chest of some form of metallic animatronic, her fingers cupped around a glowing sphere in the center of what seemed to be an advanced system. She recognized the white gloves of the hazmat suit clinging to her skin as Danny’s. Her shoulders sagged in relief._

_She breathed. Tucker would love to be seeing this, would be more helpful than she. She wanted to take her hands out of the machine’s chest, (how on earth was this ethical? What the actual fuck Danny?!), but something kept her arms still, some sense of importance that she just couldn’t quite place. What was he doing? What were they doing? Had he always known that they could do this, whatever this was?_

_Suddenly, something simultaneously white-hot and white-cold hit her square in the back, searing pain through her skin and travelling up her nerves, up and down her spine. She tensed, gasping out in pain, turning her head with her stylistically sharpened teeth bared—but ah, these weren’t_ her _stylized teeth, these were Danny’s fangs. She didn’t have her split tongue to hiss out with right now; she had a glowing, bright green_ mouth appendage _(it didn’t even loosely resemble a human tongue!) to intimidate with._

_Fine, it was a tongue. But, most tongues weren’t that fucking long._

_Above her, she had a single second to catch sight of bright, gleaming_ red _before she was shoved to the ground._

_“Valerie!” she growled, twisting Danny’s shoulder behind his back to attempt and make a backwards thrust. Danny’s ghost form could handle this. The huntress caught her wrist in one hand, shoving it against her back._

_Sam winced hard, her jaw clenching and grinding her teeth together. Trying to imagine how Danny might summon his spectral fire, she spread her fingers wide, feeling a sort of cold rise through her fingers and pass through her skin, a sensation like gaseous feathers drawing through a lipid membrane._

_She twisted her hand around, unable to move it from its place behind her back. Shit. Shit fuck fuck._

Suddenly she was back in the field, standing again staring directly at Tucker, who was looking at her hands in awe, his eyes glowing in that bright pink that signified his use of semblance, his PDA lighting the veins of his left arm in bright blue.

“Barely caught it,” he whispered.

She squinted, taking an unsteady step back, confused and disoriented. Above her, the night had long since fallen over the outskirts of Mistral, a canopy of darkness blacking out the starry sky.

Then, she realized. Whatever it was that Danny had been holding, he’d been trying to show to Tucker. He must have figured out a way to connect their semblances; Danny’s connection to veil, Sam’s own biotelepathy, and Tucker’s signal interpretation.

“What?” she asked, leaving it to him to explain what Danny must have been trying to show them.

Tucker looked down at his PDA for a moment, the start of a frown on his face. The both of them could hear grimm rustling through the woods around them, heading ever inward towards Mistral city.

Sam could feel her heart still pounding, and raised a hand to her chest, willing herself to calm. The last thing that they needed was to drop status from being the hunters to the hunted. As long as they could maintain their calm, the grimm would pass through them as though they were currents in the sea; well, until the two attacked, which they should really be getting back to doing, if any were passing so easily by.

“I think,” Tucker answered, “There’s been a plant in some kind of… well,” he chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully, “something complicated and technical.”

“Oh?” Sam asked.

“Probably Atlesian,” Tucker theorized, “looking at its complication. I mean, I could be wrong, of course, but Atlesian warships were already hovering all over Vale. It appears that whatever this is meant to be, its function is being blocked, altered, and to an extent, actively replaced.”

The screen of his PDA glowed red.

“Ah fuck,” he cursed under his breath. “Danny, Danny, Danny-o, Danny. You never think things through.”

Sam watched this with a worried eye.

“Are you still able to detect grimm?”

Tucker shook his head.

“Not at all. I think I’ve been blocked off. It would probably be best to break this and abandon its remains, in case whoever planted this is tracking it. How’s that expansion been going on your semblance?”

Sam had been working to try and communicate with grimm, to be able to reach out to them in the same way that she could plants, animals, humans, and to a very small extent, unless they were trying to reach her, ghosts. For the most part, all she could do was sense close movements en masse, but that was improvement from the mucky understanding that she’d had of this clause of her ability before. She’d only begun to train her semblance in this form two months ago, a solid six from their graduation.

Supporting her small, found family and paying back student loans to Haven (as if her parents would have ever been willing to pay for her to become a huntress, let alone go to any academy less than Atlas’s own. Now she lived separately from them, in Mistral. She was… content, until the events of just an hour prior).

Summoning vines from a tree a foot to the left and behind of her boyfriend, she caught his arm and twisted, tiny shoots twisting around the device and hitting the button to release, prying it off of his arm and bringing it forth.

“Sam!” Tucker groaned. “Why?”

She reached for her bat, Cling to Life (Ye Dying Soul), slung across its sheath over her back, and pulled it away, tightening her grip around its handle and swinging it. Purple dust slinked up over its exterior in the form of a spider’s web, tinged with green. It altered gravity on its own, increasing the weight that she moved and pulling back, then releasing as she brought it down in a rapid, unrestrainted, yet highly controlled precise bludgeoning. Instantly, the steel exterior and ‘shatter-proof’ glass of the PDA crumbled, falling to bits in the grass before her feet. She stepped over a few sparks, the blue dust webbing over the soles of her shoes instantly quelling its fizzles.

“You wouldn’t have been able,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders carelessly.

Tucker whimpered, staring down at her feet, betrayed.

“Well, you did say it yourself,” she teased, reaching up and patting him on the shoulder. “It needed to be broken.”

“Yeah, but that was just brutal and cruel,” he argued.

“Like eating meat?” she egged him.

He threw his head back up with a glare.

“Meat is love, meat is life, Sam.”

“Meat is unnecessary cruelty that’ll give you a heart attack if you keep eating it at the rate that you do,” she argued back, for posterior’s sake.

“At least I don’t live off of grass and dirt.”

She rolled her eyes, raising up her bat threateningly, flexing her biceps.

“You know that ultra-recyclo vegetarians eat so much more than that.”

Around them, the woods had gone suspiciously silent. All was still but for the light, chilled breeze that brushed above the undergrowth.

Sam shivered.

_What?_

It had to be grimm.

Her answer came to her in the form of a long, clawed hand reaching out from above. She gasped, vines sprouting from her own fingertips and reaching into her bat, curving its end as she dug her heels into the ground, charging her boots with green dust before she launched herself into the air, pushing off of Tucker’s shoulder with one hand and spinning herself around a tree branch with what was now more so a hook than anything else.

“Sam!” Tucker yelled.

She turned on the branch, bending low over it, staring at the thing that had tried to grab her, seeing Tucker unleash the bare form of Unearthed Connections. His weapon, when interfaced with his PDA, was massively powerful; his semblance’s ability to interpret, manipulate, and output signals allowing him perfect control over the device, to wield it as though it were part of his own body.

Unfortunately, that very PDA was now lying broken on the ground where Sam had been standing. She doubted that it would’ve been very useful as it had been, anyway.

Tucker met her eyes, then turned his eyes to the grimm in the other tree. Looking past the one, Sam realized that she could make out many more eyes looking down at the two of them through the thick canopy.

She grimaced. They must have circled around; these were clever beasts.

Tucker’s circular lion ears twitched. Her own slit pupils shrank to the thinness of a paper as he raised his staff, separating it into two bladed halves in his hands.

“You know how you were working on manipulating grimm, Sam?” he asked, quietly.

“Mm-hmm,” she acknowledged, twisting her head around to take in all of the creatures surrounding them.

One, two, three, five, nine, eleven. They were surrounded by eleven grimm, relatively small, monkey, with elongating arms and what looked to be not fur, but black scales, likely sharp as knives. The things chittered at them, a few swinging thin, dangly arms with oversized, elongated hands that she had no doubt could be swung sharp as whips.

At least they appeared to be relatively weak, strength wise. That spoke of nothing for their precision, though, and if she had learned anything since her early days at Haven, using all the force she could with little to no control, it wasn’t their strength that one had to worry about. At least tiny grimm didn’t tend to have the intelligence of the larger of their kind.

“Well,” Tucker continued, “If Danny could reach the other way around, do you think that they might be able to, at least to an extent, haha, do the same?”

Sam looked down at him briefly, her eyes harsh. She watched as a bead of nervous sweat slicked down the back of his neck. She looked back up at the grimm.

“Either way,” she responded, taking off in an instant, launching herself towards the nearest, that being the one that had reached towards her, pulling back on her now-club before swinging it forward, engaging red dust for fire, before swinging the front end of it into the thing’s head and crushing it against the tree.

Its soft body crumbled like an eggshell under the force of her hit, dark smoke rising as its remains dispersed. The other monkey grimm screeched, lashing towards her with their long, thin forearms, and she leapt up higher, swinging herself up above them all. A few clawed hands nicked her face and arms, to which she grunted.

From the ground, Tucker’s eyes met her own, looking up questioningly. She gave a quick, brief nod, leaping up even higher, into position. The monkeys screeched between them, outraged, some jumping up while others jumped down. The end of Tucker’s staff glowed in bright white, and Sam _grinned_ , hefting her club up and allowing it to form into a full bat once more, petering back in the purple dust so that white could flow in.

A huge flash erupted from the end of Tucker’s staff, and ice overtook the trees and grimm of their in between. Clear ice froze the world, capturing it in an eerie, silent stillness. Calling to the plants with her semblance, Sam gently coaxed them to relax and strengthen, to weaken just enough for pliability. Then, she brought her bat down.

There was a thunderous, resonant crack, and the ice broke. With its extending wounds, limbs and heads and bodies tore, more of that dark, shadowy smoke seeping up through it in an alluring, almost picturesque scene.

Sam dropped down from her perch, deactivating the studs within her soles and instead activating the skates, gently swooping back down to the ground.

“Not bad,” she commented, raising her fist.

“Touché,” Tucker responded, raising his staff in a mockery of her finale.

“Tucker,” she groaned, bemoaned at his behavior.

“What? You were really cool!” he gushed. “Almost as cool as that one ex-Atlesian military movie huntress you always go off about!”

She shook her head, exasperated, and gave him a much more condescending pat on the shoulder.

“Saaaaaam,” he complained.

“Come on, dumbass,” she ordered, starting in back towards the city. “I have a feeling that not all of the grimm are going to be coming from this direction. We’re going to be needed back in town if things start going awry, in case there are any grimm in the streets.”

He paled in horror.

“You don’t think that that’s actually possible, what with all of the other hunters around, do you?” he asked.

She snickered audibly, but inwardly, she frowned. While Mistral was far from Vale, the effects on the capital city of that kingdom clearly were… extensive. While Mistral’s capital were most definitely also drawing in grimm in droves, they wouldn’t face the drastic, immediate danger. They also didn’t have Atlesian military personnel around to help them, though that was part of the reason why Sam liked it there so much.

Beyond just the capital, however, there were the surrounding cities of Mistral. Down below, but not quite as far out as the outskirt towns, Amity Park was sure to be low on hunters.

If they were to make it there by any reasonable time, they’d have to take a vehicle, as less-safe around grimm as that could be. The only way that they could reach one quickly, though, was to head back up.

That, Sam decided, as well as anything otherwise necessary, she would do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with this, chapter one has been completed!
> 
> A tiny reminder on the 1:1:1 meaning:  
> Arc : Chapter : Section.  
> Due to college, I'm having immense difficulty churning out large amounts of fic at a time, and I hate not posting or updating things because I begin a full chapter but can't humanly get the entire thing done with the complications of my current schedule. So, I'm releasing chapters in bits and pieces.  
> Any thoughts on Sam or Tucker's weapons or semblances of choice? Perhaps Wes's from last 1:1:3? If so, leave a comment below! I'd love your feedback.  
> See you next time!


	5. 0:2:1 The Breath Between Worlds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to chapter one babes

Sat on the plush pink glitter sheets of her and Star’s bed, Paulina picked at her nails, watching the red screen of her wide screen in silence. In the kitchen, she could hear Star and Kwan still moving, humming together a friendly little tune as they cooked the team dinner.

After graduating Haven Academy, the A-lister team, Team Skipped, had decided to rent out a place in Mistral city, safe as a bunch of huntsmen and huntresses could be from the grimm, yet with plenty of opportunity to work and make some cash.

The team had met long before their first steps onto Haven’s grounds. Underground networks could be dangerous if one was inexperienced, and when each of them had first ventured into the unchartered web (excluding Star, who had always been a bit of a techie—not to be confused with tech junkie). It was a surprise to all of them honestly that none of them had been found out in the time they spent under their parents’ control.

But now, they were all together, graduated, living on their own, and they had each other’s backs to the death in the case that anything unpreferable were to occur. Jumping in with their ridiculous plan to team up with people they hadn’t met had been a ridiculous risk, but damn, had it been worth it.

“So, this is like, a thing,” Dash spoke, carefully.

Paulina hummed thoughtfully, picking at her nails anxiously as he paced the room. She’d called him in the second she’d noticed the bad vibes coming from the live feed. Dash had originally wanted to take them all out to a bar to drink to Haven’s competitor’s success, but now she gathered that the two of them were both glad that Kwan had convinced them to stay in for the night.

One didn’t really argue with Kwan on miniscule matters; his semblance allowed him to foresee future status complications and successes, which had come in extremely handy in warding off their parents by all but taking over Haven Academy.

He’d even managed to keep Paulina’s own off of her back. They’d been enraged upon her request for them to fund her training as a huntress, and her father had fallen to seizure when she decided to “even bother” applying for Haven, a school that they viewed as being so far beneath Atlas Academy that it was worthless.

Well, she was free of them now. She was safe, Dash was safe from his father in Vacuo, Star was safe from her mother in Vale, and they had all found family in each other, Kwan, and his parents.

They’d all been super suspicious of the mysterious faunus boy who’s private thread they’d stumbled upon in the beginning—who just went out and offered a place in his team to three other kids he didn’t know who he did know all hailed from less than great backgrounds, no matter what their social status might say? But no, he’d proven time and again that all he wanted was the desire of the model huntsman:

To protect and raise the conditions of the people.

_From the beneath, we push ever upwards, knocked down again and again for what is right until we learn how to not predict and fight, and die, but actively live._

She remembered his unlocking of her semblance.

They were all grateful to him, more than he himself perhaps knew.

“We need to tell them,” she replied, keeping her voice monotone.

“Yeah,” he agreed, nodding his head. He crossed his arms, tenser than his body language would indicate to one who didn’t know him as well as the three.

She sighed, pulled her legs down over the bed into a proper sit, and set her shoulders straight.

“Star, Kwan!” she yelled. “Get your asses in here!”

The sound of something metal hit the ground, and Paulina caught a soft “whoops!” from Kwan, before Star yelled back, “Just a sec, hun!”

A hand came to rest comfortingly on her shoulder, and she slumped, before promptly straightening back up.

Things had just become intense.

* * *

_Cold, uncompromising pressure weighed through his lungs, pushing his cells apart. All around him, inside him, he breathed it; a sea of stars, empty and bright and oh so beautiful._

_Scared, baby blue eyes shone with reflections of the heaven’s lights as they widened, and then he clamped them shut, curling tight into himself as a shock rocked his very being. There were consciousnesses amidst the night; he could see them even with his eyes closed, shining even brighter, from closer and some even further distances than the stars themselves._

_The heavy sound of the world, heaving and moving, ever shifting, it’s subtle growl was, for one instant, silent. He could hear nothing, and at the same time, so much more than he ever had before; through splitting pain that tore his being apart, his soul mutated, his aura seeping from his form in a halo of unsubtle, sparking, yet soothing royal blue light. He could hear the ripples of a billion streams, the ticking of crickets in high grasses at night, the gentle and foreboding whisper of warm wind curling across fields of wheat, rain pouring and catching in the leaves of a forest. And so far beneath the turbulent waves of the seas and oceans of the world that he called home, he could feel the shifting of massive somethings, tectonic activity that might never stop until it all did._

_He could hear it all, and he could hear the unnatural murmuring of something inconceivably foreign; something so fundamentally disconnected from the universe as he knew it._

_And yet, he floated in the membrane connecting the two._

_He exhaled the star themselves, the sound appropriately tiny in the midst of everything. At once, the sound of space boomed in his ears a second time, and he threw his eyes open, undulating his form, raising his head._

_Where once his eyes had been baby blue, acid green spit out a hostile glow and stark, unforgiving white replaced the black pupils of his past._

_Just as quickly, the world released him._

* * *

Rubber burnt on the harsh concrete road, raindrops blistering against the (ghost)windshield of Vlad’s bike. He revved the engine loudly, travelling faster than a normal bike, even huntsman customized, should be able to go, 600 mph and building. Water splashed violently along in a trail behind him, twigs and litter crunching beneath him. The wind beat around his form, trying to drag him this way and that as he cut through the low air, but he kept his stead, practiced from many long years.

The cliffs of Mantle drew up after a comically short time of travel, and he pressed his foot harder onto his gas, whipping around an abrupt twisting curve to begin his upwards upheaval.

He just had to get to the meeting in time! Find Lionheart, find out just what the _fuck_ he did, _who_ he’d sent in place of the original team that the school had voted in. He needed to know what was going on.

Rocks slick with water tumbled from the walls as he ascended, falling either into his path or at him. He grit his teeth, ignoring them and turning himself and his bike intangible, but still visible; instantly, the cut of the air and the trail of water behind him ended, leaving just his image arising with no earthly consequence on the world around him.

It was _exhilarating_.

The first run-down sector of Mantle drew up around him faster than he could blink, passing by just as quickly. Sirens in the distance signaled either cops alarmed at his speed or a grimm attack – he didn’t listen or look to learn which. Neither were of importance.

He turned himself intangible as he surpassed the second larger division, drawing in closer, slowing down ever so slightly, an entire 300 mph, before deciding no, _fuck_ that, he was going to go in hostile and blazing. Immediately he kicked up his speed again, an entire 800 miles per hour driving directly towards Mantle Capital Main Street, pulling to an abrupt stop directly before the town hall.

His eyes blazed bright, otherworldly pink as he reached for tangibility, hopping off of his bike and ripping his helmet from his head. Instantly, the pouring rain soaked through his hair, slicking it back against his head. He snarled like a drowned rat, wasting no further time as he marched towards the doors, grabbing the shiny golden handle and twisting it, tossing the heavy, metal body of it aside against the wall as though it were a petite little wooden saloon thing.

A young attendant in uniform squeaked from behind the entry counter. He stepped inside, not dimming his eyes in the least.

“Vlad Masters,” he introduced himself. “I trust you know where to take me?”

They blinked, then started, “Sir, you’ll need to authorize--.”

“Lionheart sure didn’t need to when he changed the competitors on roster,” he growled.

The attendant’s eyes widened and they took at step back.

“Sir--!”

He pulled his badge from his suit pocket, brandishing it with a smile faker than his will to live.

They looked at it carefully, keeping their distance; he didn’t miss the magnifying change in their eyes. Their semblance must be useful, he thought. Too bad that he could do better. They lead him to the office, taking care to reach for the door before he could.

Heads perked up and turned from the seats of the large, ovular emergency table as the door opened. He stood, dripping in the entryway for all of a few seconds, for dramatic flair’s sake. Then, without further ado, without nodding at or looking at any of them, walked in and took his seat. The door fell closed ominously behind him.

There was silence. He could feel all eyes on him.

“So, have we begun?” he asked, carefully, making sure still not to look directly at anyone in particular.

His eyes traced overtop of forms, just barely skirting as he took note of who sat where.

Lionheart sat at the end. He grit his teeth, feeling his fangs slide out under his skin.

Someone coughed. It was the Capital’s mayor.

“Ah, not quite yet, sir, I’m afraid,” he bustled, adjusting his glasses.

Vlad turned his head to stare directly at him. The nervous man twitched under his gaze.

“There are still three minutes until this meeting is due to begin.”

“Well, we’re all here, aren’t we?” he asked, allowing something vicious to rise on the underside of his tongue. He contracted his pupils, allowing his iris to glow menacingly brighter. He sat up impossibly taller, widening the way he held his shoulders. “I think that in an emergency situation, as long as we’re all present, we should begin.”

“W-well, that’s not quite to code, but a fair and good point, sir, Sorry, sir,” the mayor attempted to retort.

 _Pushover_.

Vlad turned away, finally taking his first good look at Professor Lionheart. The man had his back fully against his chair, staring at Vlad anxiously. A line of sweat ran down his forehead.

On the inside, Vlad grinned. He was going to tear him apart.

“So, then, Professor,” he began. “Just who did you send to Vytal in place of our chosen competitors?”

“Y-you misunderstand,” the man immediately tried, his eyes flickering across a few partisan’s of the table. “Team Star had an issue come up directly before takeoff. There as nothing else I could do!”

Vlad growled.

“That’s complete bullshit; you could have sent the second pick team, or the third.”

“None of those kids were planning on this and some members were already out of campus with their families!” Lionheart defended. “Team Crimson was the best senior team I had on deck.”

Vlad burned _hot_.

“Senior team?” he snarled. “I don’t even think those students went to Haven. Were they even _students_ at all?”

Lionheart choked, grabbing for the glass of water before him. Vlad simmered, glaring harshly into his wrinkled, cowardly face.

“Well, _Headmaster_ Lionheart?” he asked, sickly sweet. “Do tell where they came from.”

Lionheart gulped down half of his glass, then sat it back on the table, taking a moment to steady himself. Then, when he was ready, he answered.

“Team Crimson has been working towards their degrees for roughly four years, depending on which member we’re talking about. They’re an amalgamation; one was an old student who had to leave for a couple of years, and the other three lost their old teammate to illness.”

“Ah, really?” Vlad asked, sardonically. “Then why did I never hear of such cases?”

“You haven’t been in office for very long,” Lionheart pointed out.

There were murmurs from around the table. Vlad turned his eyes to the loudest whisperers, pointedly.

“And did any of you, then?” he asked.

There were multiple head shakes. He turned back to Lionheart and _grinned_.

“Well, well, Headmaster,” he finished, to the Professor’s dread. “I think this’ll leave a tarnish on your record. You might want to procure some evidence, some documentation.”

Lionheart reached down to his side without thinking, bringing up a briefcase.

“I have plenty,” he defended. “Records, everything. I brought it in case of an accusation such as this.”

“Gentlemen, we can look at these files later,” another voice interrupted, this coming from the opposite end of the table.

Vlad turned his head, redirecting his ghastly glare. When it landed on the one who'd spoken, his expression softened with understanding.

“That’s very true,” he admitted. “Right now, there are more important things on the line, such as securing this kingdom and protecting its people. We can hold off on deciding the date of Lionheart’s trial until the end.”

“Thank you,” the woman who had interrupted replied.

He recognized her as Amelie Cyllell, the Capital’s District Chief. He gave a very small, very brief nod of respect. He didn’t mean it, but it weren’t as though she knew that.

“Well, then,” he confirmed, having well since established his dominance over the night’s discussion. “Let’s get the true purpose of this meeting underway.”

He wouldn’t forget the fear in Lionheart’s eyes, fear of discovery. After all, it was his own.

* * *

Bright green liquid leaked from equally green, bioluminescent fireflies. Penny [that's not my name, what is my name? **W̱̮̳͖̝̣̽̄͌̈́͆̄͢h̴̢̡̧̛͎͕̣̖͍̤̍͑̍̆̐ā̵̡̦̤͕͙̩̹̗͚̤̎͑̋͐͛̚t̼͍̝̗̯̹̤̼͊͛͌͐ ï̻̫̤̣̞͙͙̲̲͎̈̇̎̇̿̄̉ṡ̡̜͉̱̭͖͇͇͐̏̒̌̇̍͑͘ m̛͉͚̦̰̹̓͆̇̒̓̇́͠͠y̶̥̳̪͇̯͔̩̪̞̓͛͒̽͌͌̐͠ͅ ņ̶̡͇͈̠͕̓̈́̉̿̋͝ä̷̰̩̘͍̺͋̍͋̋̎̌m̘̬͙̩̞͙̻̹͍̞̎̈́̾͂̽͘ě̮̠̬̥̲̟̆͗̇̓͗̀͒͜ͅ?̷̮̫̱̺̼̘̻͎̲̓͐̂̓́̕͢?̶̟̰̖̜̖̘̝͖̲̑̆̅̅͠?̵͉̼͖̰̭̋͑͑̈́** ] stared up from where she floated just above the ground, the tail of her skirt tracing against grass which glowed from within. Above her, the sky was green and backlit by stars. They weren’t any that she was familiar with, but they were gorgeous all the same. Energy from hitting the atmosphere from beyond cast auroras of the rainbow and further; it was almost a kaleidoscope of otherworldly colors, so many that she had never been introduced to, dazzling above her.

 _Gorgeous_ ….

Her bright red eyes scanned the world around her in greater detail, the pupil of the left a cut to nothingness in the form of a child’s first hand-drawn star, the right a boldened X. The skin covering of her form had been peeled away, revealing the silver beneath; even that was no longer the same. Instead, it shone darker, a space gray in comparison to prior platinum.

Short, violet, bubbly ‘hair’ like the water of a geyser but infinitely gentler swayed and framed her face. She tasted the air with a bright blue tongue, the same shade as the exponentially larger bow that bounced atop the back of her head.

Her form didn’t seem to be connected any longer; she wondered how she could possibly be conscious. She certainly wasn’t alive, never had been, according to the majority of Atlesian techs. Her father always disagreed, and General Ironwood never commented, and Winter liked to pretend that she was indifferent, but all the same.

Turning her head, she looked at her disconnected forearm, watching the fingers flex before she formed a peace sign.

Deciding that she was done mentally adjusting, even though her _Core_ , (what was a Core? She certainly had no idea, but her system had decided that it did. Perhaps it was an equivalent of a heart, that had been installed? She needed to find her dad), shrieked otherwise, she flipped down onto her feet, force-falling to Remnant beneath her. Glowy Remnant.

It was more vibrant than before, in a way. Yet, it seemed to lack something fundamental. She seemed to lack something fundamental, even though she felt she had _gained_ so much.

She didn’t know if she preferred it this way or the other. She felt somehow more tangent with her new upgrades, and yet….

It wasn’t that she was cold; no, before, she had been cold. Her… ‘soul,’ for lack of a better term [no, she had it, and it was “father’s soul”—shut up, _shut up_ , **_shut up_** ], felt different.

She cautiously raised a leg, finding the disjointing more than difficult to acclimate to, as her calve and foot rose far higher than her thigh, all of a sudden, at face level.

“Well, fuck,” she cursed.

Then, she let out a soft gasp, her hands immediately flying to cover her mouth. She had just cursed! What would the General think?

Winter would be proud, but would stand by whatever the General said. Oh no, she was already becoming a bad bot, just like all of the other techs had predicted! Father had said that they were just jealous, but this was undeniable!

She just didn’t know where it had come from. Had she been hacked? She appeared to have,, very different physiology now than she had just--.

Oh. _Oh_.

The light behind her eyes dimmed, and then glowed brighter, incandescent.

She’d been killed.

She’d been killed.

She’d been… killed?

She didn’t realize that she had even started running until she crashed face first into an average-sized, homely and wooden-patterned, deep purple metallic door. She took a few steps back in confusion, bringing a hand up to rub at her head. The ‘hair’ she ran her fingers through felt weird between her fingers, ticklish.

She’d been killed.

She’d felt nothing as she was torn apart, nothing but shock. She’d felt worry, worry at the expression on her opponent’s face—Pyrrha Nikos, the undefeatable of Argus. That expression of horror looked her dead in the eyes. The world flowed into itself around her, the fireflies melting into the hurricane that buffered she and the door from all angles.

She reached out, slowly, realizing that she was still in shock. The auroras from beyond, beyond this door, she was now certain, not just the atmosphere—the atmosphere formed the walls of the door, if disconnected, she was now sure—vanished for all of a microsecond.

Then, a chaos of color so much more exponentially intense than she had even witnessed to this point exploded before her, gusts burning her skin in wisps and gasps.

If she didn’t already have radiation from the mixture of dust that just kept leaking from her free-floating, disconnected limbs, then she definitely would after… whatever this was.

She felt sad. She wouldn’t be able to see Ruby again, or comfort Pyrrha Nikos, if she was radioactive.

She wouldn’t be able to protect the people of Mantle like she’d been training for.


	6. 0:2:2 In The Blink of an Eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things aren't only changing on the mortal plane.
> 
> No, in Lady Pandora's acropolis, ancient plans will now go astray.

Within her Acropolis, Lady Pandora rose from her grand hot spring. The helm hanging over her forehead gleamed a sickly green-golden in the light of the Ghost Zone. Her fuschia hair, which had moments before swayed calmly, flared and burned, crackling in the air behind her. Her blood-red eyes glowed unnaturally bright.

From the right, an attendant in similar golden armor scurried over. Theirs, however, shone silvery-white.

“My lady,” the soldier addressed, reaching out a hand, a concerned expression pinching their face. Their own turquois hair shimmered, short, from the hole in their helmet.

“I’m alright,” Pandora assured, gently grasping their hand within two of her own and smiling.

The soldier’s shining white pupils bore into her own from their wide, opalesque, refracted light iris. She let their cold hand, with its nails painted in a shade that seemed to change all on its own, fall, and it dropped back down to their side.

This was a new recruit, a newly dead at that. They should have been training inside the Parthenon, not keeping guard for her!

She intook a breath.

“Who sent you here?” she asked, sharply.

“The Director, ma’am,” the newly-dead replied.

Her eyes narrowed. Tonight was the night that she had, so many millenia ago, died. It was a night that could de-stabilize her entirely. A core flare was expected, but along with it, a sudden drop in power as Clockwork sent her back. It was a night of strength and vulnerability.

What was the Director thinking, appointing a newbie to guard her? If she, herself, were to flare, the heat of her core could raze them to the ground. If they were the only one around, and another powerful ghost were to attack, Ancient Spirits….

The newly dead blinked, cocking their head to the side.

“Ma’am?” they asked.

Pandora almost didn’t hear them; either she or they could have been a mile underwater for all she could perceive of them anymore.

“Are you okay?”

Something pressed in on her core from all sides and angles; from within. She felt suddenly nauseous, and felt her power pulse outwards. It was wrong, wrong wrong.

“What did you do?” she choked out, falling to the ground. Her clawed fingers dug into the neon blue dirt. “What have you done?”

It was too early, still. Her formation buzzed with it; it was an inherent sense of offness, of wrongness that she’d existed with since she’d been backtracked.

The new soldier leaned down over her, an almost imperceptible grin gracing their silvery lips. Slowly, the their form hardened, soft curves of muscle and joints becoming rigid, sharp edges.

“Dear, dear Pandora,” they mocked, their voice itself the sound of needles and claws on the old elementary blackboards of her first few teachers. It deepened as they crowed.

Their skin began to shine, the light shining through their translucent form in an array of constantly changing, impossible colors.

“Holo!” she yelled, enraged, reaching up with one arm to grab at their white button-down’s collar.

Even the color of their hair began to change as the helmet they wore melted away, golden liquid running down their face like the ichor of the Gods. They opened their mouth to reveal four hefty canines, just as indecisive in coloration as the rest of their form. An eyesplittingly bright white split snake tongue flicked out from between their parted lips.

“Sorry, hun,” they apologized, flattening a hooked hand over the bridge of her shoulders and pushing her down.

She gasped, her body giving way with little resistance.

“I just needed one. And now, I’ve got it.”

_Got… what?_

Pandora panted, looking up from the ground with half of her head melted away.

_What did you do to me?_

“It was fun training with your noobs, though. Too bad that after tonight, they’ll probably all be dead.”

They must’ve done something to the water in the springs, and the fumes…

This was bad. Whatever it was, it had been utterly undetectable, even to Pandora herself, who knew her labyrinth, her lair, better than Clockwork knew his own.

To be fair, Clockwork didn’t know much of what wasn’t *time* well, at all. Without his constantly changing assistants, he’d probably have accidentally _ended_ himself ages ago, and in an incredibly stupid manner.

Pandora closed her eyes, then reopened them, panting for the ectoenergy of the Zone, sucking in as much as she could manage. However, with her inability to just, think, she forgot that the fumes would still be contaminants.

How was Holo, the newbie, still standing there? This was worrying. Holo was newly undead, a baby ghost!

They stood tall, their back turned to her, with their floofy, sparkly hair spilling around their neck like a billion strands of mirror. Their broad shoulders were laid-back calmly; proudly, even. She had raised this baby ghost for all of a few weeks. She felt proud.

But then, why was she on the ground behind and beneath them? Something was right. Something didn’t make sense.

The ground of her lair rumbled beneath her, cracks appearing in the very dirt that she lay upon. This wasn’t good, she decided. She wondered what was going on. It was a good thing that Holo was here.

The drug wasn’t affecting them.

The drug wasn’t affecting them.

The—oh.

Suddenly, a beam of bright pink energy shot towards her soldier, blasting them square in the chest. They let out a short screech, falling back on top of her, their knees dissolving into a tail—she melted. They dug their nails into her form, pushing up and then back, flipping themselves over her. She watched her own blue goop flick off of their armor and skin.

Then, a red, robotic being descended, made of materials definitely not native to the Ghost Zone. She watched in amazed curiosity as this tiny being buzzed around, aiming and firing at her trainee. Holo shot back with stunning voracity, hissing and screaming vehemently. She even caught some of their verbal exchange.

“This isn’t any of your fucking business, Little Red!” they screeched.

“I don’t know who the hell that ghost there on the ground is, but you’re trouble wherever you are!” the Red One yelled back.

Pandora stopped keeping up as her form continued to dissolve. She just couldn’t for the undeath of her pay attention. She felt funny. She couldn’t feel her arms anymore, or her spine, for that matter. Her core was melting.

“You’re not going to get in my way now! This is the first opportunity we’ve had in a millenia!”

Oh, that was funny. Pandora could’ve sworn that they’d only been around for a few weeks.

“Shut up, you ancient monstrosity! What are you even trying to do, anyway? Kill everything?!”

Holo’s arm broke, physically shattering, above Pandora’s head. Splinters fell into her back from high above, sinking into her form like daggers of ice and firming her. Clarity sparked back into her mind, and she snapped her face up, baring her own fangs.

Holo was glaring at the Red One, until they seemed to have a Realization. They shivered visibly, once, then glanced down—and so did the Red One.

She was off the ground before her mind even had time to process the change—she didn’t need to; her core, her obsession, did it before her.

Eight spears materialized around her as she sped abruptly upwards, before fire burst from their tips, and they soared ahead, piercing directly through Holo in successive order.

Tiny shards of Holo’s form spilled from their lips as they coughed.

“What the fuck?” they cursed.

Their white pupils burned with hatred as they glared down at Pandora, still soaring upwards, and then the Red One. They raised a hand. Pandora could feel the Red One’s heart speed up in her chest.

“No!” the Red One yelled, charging forwards. Their voice trembled with… fear.

Almost too late, Pandora sensed it. The solidifying of an entrance, a gate to another lair.

There was a newly dead approaching their door for the first time right above her labyrinth, and everything was in shambles. The guards must surely be out, if they weren’t rushing to their Lady’s defense, and she feared their condition, if she was so powerful and had still been so affected by whatever _Holo_ had done.

She cut off her rush immediately, using the force of her abrupt stop to force out an energy shield, as large as she could make it. She could see reality pinch as the edges of the door solidified themselves.

There was something charging in a gun on the Red One’s arm—more of that pink energy, but much more potent, and a lot more of it. Holo drew their legs up beneath their self, crossing their ankles, and clapped their hands together—a halo, a ring of ghastly light spewed forth, before inflating upon itself exponentially, bursting outwards in a massive lightshow of power and raw energy that washed straight through Pandora herself like the energy of yellow dust, entirely unchanneled.

Even through it, she could hear the creak of the door as it opened for the first time.

She hoped that her shield, her energy field, would be enough.


End file.
